Black Chestnut Brethren?

Look who Vinca and I fluted on Square Isle on Tuesday! As soon as the horse appeared, I thought, hey, it's like Galileo without the socks. Sure enough, I clicked on it and discovered it was a black chestnut Calabrese. At this point, I considered switching to Galileo (our first wild and my first horse, a black chestnut sabino Calabrese) for a screenshot. But then I was like, nah, just get on with it, Felicity.

Arg! I wish I had! I missed my chance - never will the two appear side by side on HI2. Wouldn't you know it, the horse ended up being Pepsi's first +6/6 wild of 2016! A +75 stallion at that! 

I love his diamond, and that rather awkward stocking makes me think he may be related to Galileo. XD Brothers, perhaps?

Galileo and Murky

Galileo in avatar form

Bethany stalks the livery horses a lot, and she says she can't recall ever seeing another black chestnut sabino Calabrese there, and maybe only one or two black chestnut Calabreses. How crazy is it that the two best ones we've ever captured both have the black chestnut base?! No complaints from me. They're quite a handsome shade of brown - it reminds me of dark chocolate. =P 

Winter Wonderland

One of our HI2 buddies totally surprised us with a Christmas gift... in January. XD She'd had the gift since Dec. 21, but it took us until Jan. 20 to be online at the same time. As you've probably already figured out from the pictures down there, the gift is a NEZ!



And not just any Nez, but a 6/6 blue eyed varnish roan stallion! Wow!

I am owner #4 for this handsome guy. His story goes something like this: he was created with a super horse token in November and was originally named "Come No Farther." Our buddy then found him for sale in his second owner's ranch store and renamed him "Winter Wonderland." Since she is a non-sub right now, we had to do a nail-biting lighting-quick livery pass off. No random livery stalker foiled our plan, thank goodness. We couldn't have planned it better, really, since it was a half-price adoption day.

I'm thrilled to have this guy in the herd! Not only do I love the fact that he is varnish roan (we've never had one of those before!), but he is also seal brown under the spots and roaning like my real-life horse, Talia! His avatar looks even more like Talia. How cool is that?

Clearly, this guy is meant to be mine. <3 He and Julie's Welshie, Napoleon, are going to be such good buddies! (Napoleon is also seal brown and has the Grumbler persona.) =) I have shortened his name to "Wonderland" to conform to our 1-word naming pattern. Now he will always make me think of the Taylor Swift song as well as the Christmas song. ;^)

Thanks again, Pinto! What a thoughtful gift!

2016 Girl of the Year: Lea Clark

Say goodbye to Grace, the 2015 Girl of the Year, along with all her French bakery-themed accessories and goofy side-bangs.

Say hello to Lea Clark! In her story, she goes adventuring in Brazil, hence AG has come up with lots of beach and rainforest-themed accessories for her.

Lea has hazel eyes, "light brown" wavy hair with highlights, and a medium skin tone.

Bethany: Hmm, interesting combination of features. Very pretty.

Lily: Cool eyes. I think they might be the same as Bethany's?

Bethany: Maybe? They seem lighter and less green than mine.

Julie: She's kind of a lighter-haired, tanner version of Bethany... 

Lily: Yeah, minus the freckles.

Bethany: I love her hair style. ;^)

Lily: Can't imagine why.

Felicity: I'm seeing blond, not light brown... 

Julie: Maybe it's the lighting of these pictures. 

Bethany: Yeah, seems to be. If you google pics of her, it looks less blond in some of them...

Felicity: I don't know... 

Julie: It looks borderline to me - could go either way depending on the lighting. 

Felicity: Why didn't they just say "caramel" or "dark gold?"

Lily: Because AG didn't want people like you to be able to complain about them overdoing it with the blonds. 

Felicity: Touché. But I can still complain about there not being any African American girls of the year. How lame is that?

Bethany: Very lame.

Lily: At any rate, I think we all are in agreement that she is a big improvement over Grace?

Bethany: Yes, definitely.

Julie: Agreed!

Felicity: May the side bangs never return! 

Lily: Her outfit and accessories are cute. 

Bethany: Yeah, I wish the dress had real straps and not the double rope thing going on. No other complaints from me.

Felicity: I want a compass necklace.

Lily: That bag is cute too!

Julie: The Brazilian animals are my favorites. 

Margay Cat: $20

Sea Turtle: $18

3-Toed Sloth: $20

Felicity: Why is the sea turtle $2 cheaper than the other two? Weird.
Bethany: Poor turtle. 
Felicity: Um, does anybody else find it a bit sad that for 2 years in a row now, the setting for the GOTY doll stories is a foreign country? Apparently the U.S. isn't exciting enough. :/
Lily: Maybe they're trying to get American girls to think more globally. 
Felicity: I guess. Two years in a row just seems a bit much.

Bethany: So, everybody, hypothetical question for you. If Mom were to go absolutely nuts and buy this:

and then decide she wanted a 5th doll to go with it, which doll would you want her to get? Lea so that we could have a GOTY doll in the family? Or some other doll?

Felicity: Not Lea. If we were going for a GOTY doll, I'd have wanted Jess. She was awesome! And last I looked, you can still find her on eBay.

Julie: Great minds think alike, Felicity. I was thinking of this doll. She's the only Truly Me doll available right now with black hair! The other dark-haired Truly Me dolls all have either black-brown hair or dark brown hair. (Addy and Kaya also have black hair, but I'd be afraid of hair snags with Addy, since she has permanent earrings, and I'd worry that Kaya's braids would leave permanent crimps in her hair.) C'mon, AG, jet black hair is beautiful!

Lily: I was actually thinking it'd be fun to have a blond. A... er... blond blond, not a strawberry blond like me. More specifically, Elizabeth. I'm so glad Mom chose me instead of her way back when, but I can see why Mom was once considering her. She is such a beautiful, elegant doll.  And maybe she'd speak with a British accent. That would be awesome!

Bethany: I think it would be fun to get a custom doll from eBay - then nobody else would have the exact same one. (It can be a bit of a downer for me when I think about all the dolls out there who look just like me...) These two on there today caught my eye:

Marie-Grace body and blond wig

Blue eyes and black wig -
modeled after Arwen the elf in Lord of the Rings

Felicity: I'm liking the custom idea, though I'd never want it to happen to me. *Shudders*

Bethany: Yeah, it's kind of freaky to see random doll parts being sold on eBay for customizing purposes...

Lily: We could theoretically get a doll with gray eyes and black or blond hair this way... 

Julie: This is all hypothetical, right?

Lily: Of course it is! 

Felicity: It had better be!

Bethany: What if Mom reads this and gets ideas?

Lily: She won't. Nobody really reads this thing. Not all the way to the end at least. 

A Saturday of Socks

We have depended on the HI2 help site Esroh Legends quite a bit to help us out with various aspects of the game. Thank you, Esroh Legends! 

Esroh Legends also hosts HI2-related contests from time to time. One that's going on right now is a white sock avatar bingo. Basically, you get a blank bingo board with 25 squares. You can fill each square with a screenshot you've taken during the contest period of a different HI2 horse avatar with white socks. Each screenshot must be of a different player on a white-socked horse or of a different white-socked wild.

The more rows you are able to complete, the more times your name gets entered into the pool for winning something. Obviously, your chances are best if you complete the board. 

So, that's what we were spending our HI2 time on yesterday: Julie, Felicity, and I each took a turn of parking it near the often-bustling Plains Isle dock house. From there, we waited for players on horses with white socks to canter by. Sometimes we were successful in snapping a quick screenshot; sometimes not. We also wandered around town and the ever-popular grassy expanse near the dock house hoping to snap screenshots of any white-socked horses we had missed. Great times. Here are a few of the most interesting shots from the day:

2-avatar pileup out of the dock house... is this too weird to use?

Don't mind Hal. He just wants to see if you really have angel eyes. XD

Umm, does this count?

Sweet, 3 in one!

Erm, pardon us for standing here...

The lasagne

During her turn, Felicity took a break and rode Orion to Prairie Isle to use the flute. The flute didn't bring her a white-socked wild, but one of the other two wild horses she discovered there was!

She was a 4/6 seal brown sabino Spotted Draft Horse. :)

By the end of the day, we technically had the 25 shots we needed. We might keep going anyway in hopes of replacing some of the ones where the horses are facing forward, as we're not sure it will count if their hind socks aren't showing... XD It shouldn't really matter, since if a HI2 avatar has socks on its forelegs, it always will have them on its hind legs as well. Better safe than sorry, though, and it's fun to have an excuse to keep at it. ;)

Red Dun Sabino?

Happy New Year! Let me start it off by introducing the first interesting wild horse we've captured in 2016:

a "red dun sabino" Welsh Cob.

We've come across this particular color on a Welsh Cob before. The first time was when we spotted a 6/6 +66 stallion in the livery. (And wonder of wonders, we didn't adopt him.) When we went to check out his avatar in the BBB, we were rather confused. Check out the wild one Edoras and I fluted on Sunny Glade Isle, and see if you are too:

Does this look like red dun to you?

Uh... no, it does not. The mane and tail are definitely black.

This is red dun sabino: what happens when the dun gene dilutes the body color of a what-would've-otherwise-been a chestnut sabino horse.

Love ya, Petra <3

HI2 gets it right with the profile art, though:

Weird, huh?  Somebody screwed up. It's sad it's never been fixed. *Sighs*

But anyway, as you've probably noticed, this particular Welsh Cob is 5/6 and +68. Not too shabby at all! I don't think we're going to keep him - his stats don't meet our self-imposed standards, and the inaccurate avatar thing didn't help his case. It's a shame, since nice stallions seem to have started making themselves scarce again. Oh well, the year is young.